The FDA, formerly The Association of First Division Civil Servants, is a trade union for UK senior and middle management civil servants and public service professionals founded in 1919.[2]
Its over 19,000 members include Whitehall policy advisers, middle and senior managers, tax inspectors, economists and statisticians, government-employed lawyers, crown prosecutors, procurators fiscal, schools inspectors, diplomats, senior national museum staff, senior civil servants, accountants and National Health Service (NHS) managers.[3]
Membership structure and affiliations
Its federal structure means that some sections of the union operate under separate branding. Three parts of the union have distinctive institutional features. Senior staff at HM Revenue and Customs join the Association of Revenue and Customs (ARC) which is also a certified trade union as well as a section of FDA. Managers in the NHS join Managers in Partnership (MiP), a joint venture with Unison of which MiP members are also members.[4] Members in middle management (Higher Executive Officer and Senior Executive Officers) join Keystone.[5]
Despite often being known, particularly in the British press, as the "First Division Association",[7] the legal name is "FDA". It describes itself as "FDA - the union of choice for senior managers and professionals in public service".[3]
The original name, Association of First Division Civil Servants, was chosen because it represented first division clerks, as opposed to the Second Division Association, which represented more junior clerks. Although the terms first and second division clerks were abolished in the 1920s, it proved impossible to agree on an alternative name, and the name remained until 2000 when, following a motion to the union's annual delegate conference, the official name became "FDA".[2]
General Secretary
Dave Penman, formerly Deputy General Secretary, was elected unopposed as General Secretary in May 2012 [8] and took up office from July 2012.
His immediate predecessors were Jonathan Baume (1997-2012) (who had previously been Assistant General Secretary and Deputy General Secretary), Elizabeth Symons[9] (1989–96) and John Ward (1980–88). The first full-time General Secretary was Norman Ellis, appointed in 1974.[10]
In 1996, the then Labour Party leader Tony Blair was criticised after he nominated the outgoing FDA General Secretary Liz Symons for a peerage.[9]
His Majesty's Home Civil Service, also known as His Majesty's Civil Service, the Home Civil Service, or colloquially as the Civil Service, is the permanent bureaucracy or secretariat of Crown employees that supports His Majesty's Government, which is led by a cabinet of ministers chosen by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as two of the three devolved administrations: the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government, but not the Northern Ireland Executive.
The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) is the national trade union centre in Scotland. With 40 affiliated unions as of 2020, the STUC represents over 540,000 trade unionists.
The Scottish Government is the devolved government of Scotland. It was formed in 1999 as the Scottish Executive following the 1997 referendum on Scottish devolution.
In British politics, an affiliated trade union is one that is linked to the Labour Party. The party was created by the trade unions and socialist societies in 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee and the unions have retained close institutional links with it.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is the main trade union in the United Kingdom for people working for telephone, cable, digital subscriber line (DSL) and postal delivery companies. It has 110,000 members in Royal Mail as well as more in many other communication companies.
Elizabeth Conway Symons, Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean is a British politician and trade unionist. A member of the Labour Party, she was Minister of State for the Middle East from 2001 to 2005. She is former General Secretary of the FDA Trade Union and has served as the Chair of the Arab British Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) since 2010.
Sir David James Shackleton was a cotton worker and trade unionist who became the third Labour Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, following the formation of the Labour Representation Committee. He later became a senior civil servant.
A private secretary (PS) is a civil servant in a governmental department or ministry, responsible to a secretary of state or minister; or a public servant in a royal household, responsible to a member of the royal family.
Jonathan Edward Baume was General Secretary of the FDA from 1997 until 2012 and a member of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) from 2001 to 2012.
The Modern Records Centre (MRC) is the specialist archive service of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, located adjacent to the Central Campus Library. It was established in October 1973 and holds the world's largest archive collection on British industrial relations, as well as archives relating to many other aspects of British social, political and economic history.
The Industry and Parliament Trust (IPT) is a charity that works to promote the mutual understanding of Parliament and business. It works within the Parliament of the United Kingdom and organisations from all sectors of industry. It is non-partisan, non-lobbying and not-for-profit.
Sir Thomas Whinfield Scholar is a British civil servant who served as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury until 8 September 2022.
Mark Philip Sedwill, Baron Sedwill, is a British diplomat and senior civil servant who served as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service to Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson from 2018 to 2020. He also served as the United Kingdom National Security Adviser from 2017 to 2020. He was previously the United Kingdom's Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010 and the NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan in 2010. He was the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office from February 2013 to April 2017.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, formed in 1959 by the merger of the Irish Trades Union Congress and the Congress of Irish Unions, is a national trade union centre, the umbrella organisation to which trade unions in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland affiliate.
Managers in Partnership (MIP) is a British Trades Union for healthcare managers. It was launched in 2005 as a joint venture by UNISON, the largest public service union, and FDA, the specialist management union.
Jonathan Slater has been a high ranking British civil servant. From May 2016, he was Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education until his abrupt dismissal on 26 August 2020 following a controversy over national school examination grades.
Dave Penman is a Scottish trade union leader who serves as general secretary of the FDA, a trade union for civil servants in the United Kingdom.
Norman David Ellis is a former British trade union leader.
The Civil Service Alliance was a trade union federation bringing together civil servants in the United Kingdom.
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19,876 (2021) [1] 
